


there is a light that never goes out

by hellbeast



Series: broken string [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Barely Canon Compliant, Gen, Lore - Freeform, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:28:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1309837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellbeast/pseuds/hellbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What,” Dean sneers, “Like a friggin’ guardian angel?”</p><p>Castiel’s lips draw up into a smile – an expression that he is clearly unused to making – and he leans forward, “Yes, exactly.”</p><p>Well, fuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is a light that never goes out

Dean wakes from death, rises from _Hell_. He figures that entitles him to free shit.

* * *

It’s a pretty rundown fill-up station, washed out and as dull as the surrounding dead grass and dirt road. But the register’s got at least $450 in it, and there’s a bathroom in the back that runs tepid water. Dean splashes his face once, twice, and then looks into the mirror.

 _What the fuck are you doing, Winchester_ , his reflection asks.

 _Fuck if I know_ , he thinks, _but I never let it stop me before_.

* * *

There are army fatigues and a rucksack in a closet next to the bathroom, stuffed under buckets and rags. They’re a little big on him, and probably thirty years outdated, but he makes it work. He fills the rucksack with cans of fruit and beans and shitty processed meats, the two hunting knives from behind the counter, rope and the money from the till. He’s tying the rucksack shut and making to heft it over his shoulder when the noise starts up.

It’s got layers, he’ll notice later; high voices, harmonizing with themselves, over low voices whispering, rumbling. And in the middle of the two, a voice run through radio waves, warbling and skipping.

 _Dean_ , the middle voice says, as the high voices crack the windows in their panes and the low voices shake the earth, _Dean, Can You Hear Me?_

Dean runs.

* * *

So, it turns out he’s in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but not too far off from Bobby’s; maybe a county or three. He follows a dirt road past empty farm plots and rusted metal signs until he reaches a prim little farmhouse. There’s a woman outside, hauling a basket of eggs, and her face brightens up when she catches sight of him.

Her name is Mallory Hitchens, but she insists that Dean calls her Mal, and she lives alone. She used to live with her husband, Ed, but he’d always had heart troubles and that incident with the horses on the trail had done it in for him.

Dean doesn’t even try to get a word in edgewise, just gives perfunctory “Yes ma’am”s when she starts fussing over how thin he is and how she’ll fix that in a jiff, _don’t you worry none, darlin’!_

It’s been a few hours, and Dean’s working on his second pie – he has to hand it to Mal, the woman can make a mean pie – when the voice comes back.

 _Dean_ , it says, blowing out Mal’s windows. Dean can hear her surprised gasp from the next room over, _Don’t Move_.

He watches as a huge column of light plows into the fields, shaking the house, and has the sudden need for a gun.

* * *

The pillar of light clears with an earth-shattering boom. Mal is making small, desperate noises and Dean goes to her immediately. She’s not injured, only shaken up and something in him promises retribution; Mal is good people, and doesn’t deserve to get dragged into the shitshow that is Dean Winchester’s life.

He asks if she has any weapons, she gestures feebily to the front hall closet. Out the window Dean can see that while the pillar of light is gone, _something_ got left behind.

There’s a shotgun in the closet. It’ll have to do.

He stalks outside, into the fields, shotgun already hefted up at the hunched, glowing figure. And then it stands up.

It’s gangly, limbs stretched out too long, and tall, nearly four heads taller than him. It’s the fucking _Slender Man_ , Dean’s brain supplies, unhelpful as always.

The noises – the voices – are back, and louder than they’d been before. It – whatever it is – glows with a vibrant light, soft golds and yellows over a piercing white. He can make out four arms and five faces and horns and… six wings.

 _It’s an angel_ , a little voice says, and Dean stops short because that thought was **not** his.

 _Dean_ , the thing says, and now Dean can see all six wings and three sets of huge, glowing eyes, _Dean, Can You Hear Me?_

“What the hell is going on,” Dean snarls, ignoring the way his voice catches. He adamantly ignores the _angel, kill the angel, it’s an angel_ that **he** isn’t thinking.

 _You Can Hear Me_ , the angel sounds pleased, delighted even. It steps forward, not ever faltering when Dean levels the shotgun and puts pressure on the trigger.

The voice in his head – it’s not him, that’s for sure – is getting angrier, _kill the angel, **shoot it** it’s an angel_!

“Get outta my head,” Dean demands, _demands_ , like he can tell this thing what to do, angel or not.

 _It Is Not Me, Dean_ , the angel soothes, coming closer, _But I Can Take It From You_.

 _Jesus H Christ, Dean_ , the other voice drones on, it’s tone becoming oilier and more and more familiar, now that Dean knows it’s sure as shit not his subconscious, _you’re just as useless topside as you were down here, kiddo_.

Alastair.

The thing – the Angel – shoves forward before he can get another word out, shoves through him. He can feel Alastair, can hear him screaming, protesting, as he’s torn from Dean. It’s like ripping skin from muscle, loud snaps and pops as each little tendril of Alistair separates from the vulnerable tender pieces of Dean. He can feel the angel’s arm shoving Alastair back, back, out through Dean’s spine, and then the entire angel is walking _though_ him and _he’s drifting amongst the stars watching time pass before his eyes and then he is_

_Diving_

_down_

_down_

_**down**_

_through clouds cumulus and nimbus through oxygen through stiff leaves and tough bark and sanded brick and unyielding cement and craggy rocks deeper_

_further_

_farther_

_**faster**_

_through dirt and grit through core and time and space until there is nothing but hot hot heat and fire and pain dragging on until there is the right brightness the right soul, the right man the **righteous man** and then back_

_Up_

_Up_

_**Up**_

Dean gasps, falls to his knees and tries not to vomit up his lungs. The angels is calling his name ( _Dean, Dean Are You Alright Please Answer Me, **Dean**!_ ) but Dean is too busy trying to remember how to breathe, how to exist. Everything feels lighter, suddenly, and better than it’s ever felt in his _life_. Nothing hurts, nothing aches, nothing lingers. Alastair isn’t a dark whisper clawing into the back of his mind, and there aren’t flashes of red and echoes of screams enclosed in every blink.

 _Dean_ , the angel is saying, and it places one hand on his shoulder in what would be concern from anyone – anything – else. The angel’s hand feels heavy but isn't pressing, fluorescent and obnoxiously ever present even in his peripheral.

Everything is getting brighter, Dean realizes. The sky is fading into the lightest blue, the grass getting greener. The angel is an explosion of light and bioluminescence, still trying to get him to talk, to answer.

Dean faints.

* * *

He wakes up in Mal’s house, in a bedroom. The angel is sitting in a chair next to the bed.

“They saw instead, you going to meet a fellow soldier. To welcome him home,” the angel says before he can ask, because it’s hard to imagine anyone within a twenty mile radius missing _that_ lightshow, “And I was able to mold my shape into one a little more inconspicuous, if only briefly.”

The angel does, in fact, look less like a skeletal mess of light and wings and a touch more human. It only has two arms and one head, at any rate, even if it is still at the least a head taller than Sammy on a good day.

Oh God, Sammy.

“Where’s my brother?” Dean manages, his voice barely cracking through. The angel tilts its head, like a confused puppy, or a sharp-eyed falcon. No, Dean decides after a few minutes under that gaze, definitely more a bird of prey than a curious pup. There’s nothing comforting or puppyish about those glowing white features at all.

“Samuel Winchester and Robert Singer are approximately 150 kliks northeast of here,” the angel intones, like some kind of effulgent GPS.

“Hey,” Dean breaks in, because hey, “You’re talking.”

The angel’s head tilts further, and its eyebrows – and when did those get there? – furrow, “I have been speaking to you since you awoke, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Dean snaps, because the last thing he needs right now, from an _angel_ , of all things, is condescension, “I mean, you speaking out loud, instead of all in my head.”

“Oh,” the angel says, and Dean takes a good look. It’s still glowing, but it does look more human. He can only make out two glowing blue eyes instead of four, two arms, a nose, a mouth, eyebrows, hair. It’s even wearing clothes now, fatigues that look like a carbon copy of the ones Dean’s wearing. And even as he looks, the glowing starts to suffuse and the body shrinks like a time lapse in reverse, growing less and less until it’s just a man sitting next to him, near his height, with a 20 yard stare and skin that borders on incandescent.

“If I had continued to speak in my True Voice,” the angels begins hesitantly, “I would have deafened the elderly woman living here. That action would be unlikely to endear me to you.”

Dean’s first thought is, _Why the fuck do you want to be endeared to me_. The second is _Why the fuck can I hear the ‘True Voice’ (capitalized emphasis and all) of an angel_.

“Okay,” Dean redirects, because he’s not even going there, “Why are you here? No, first, who the fuck are you?”

The angel – and Dean can’t even deny it, as much as he want to, because he was _in_ the angel’s head – doesn’t quite frown when Dean curses, but it’s a near thing.

“I am Castiel. I am the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”

“Okay,” Dean says, nodding in encouragement, “But why are you here, instead of, you know, _**not here**_.”

The emphasis, unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to translate. Castiel’s head tilts further, until he’s only about 12 degrees from horror movie possession.

“I am here because you are here.”

“What,” Dean sneers, “Like a friggin’ guardian angel?”

Castiel’s lips draw up into a smile – an expression that he is clearly unused to making – and he leans forward, “Yes, exactly.”

Well, fuck.

**Author's Note:**

> this is working off the idea that if Dean hadn't broken the first seal in hell he would "fully" be a Righteous Man, capable of seeing and hearing the true visages and voices of angels
> 
> plus other things that i never got around to writing


End file.
